Locating third sexes

M. Holmes

Seeking to answer the question 'Where do intersexed persons fit in the world?' the essay examines anthropological knowledge production and debates about the existence and significance of so-called 'third' sexes and/or genders. Concern is given to problems of colonialist and masculinist conceptualisations of third sex/gender in a variety of socio-cultural contexts, and feminist critique of that material is launched. This paper is concerned with the limits of oppositional thinking about the construction of sexed subjects, and with the challenge of relaying knowledge about divergent sex/gender systems to readers who may never have the opportunity to see for themselves how different cultures operate. The paper argues that it is overly simplistic to see societies with more than two sex/gender categories as superior to those that divide the world into just two. To understand whether a system is more or less oppressive we have to understand how it treats its various members. Glossing over that information impoverishes the information to which scholars unable to (re)visit specific sociocultural locations have access.